Cybermania Safe

Not all cybermania is financial. The “cancel culture” cycle—where a tweet triggers a firestorm of performative outrage, then a counter-outrage, then a forgetting—is a social cybermania. It produces psychological exhaustion without resolution. Lesson: Social manias consume attention and generate trauma for zero-sum outcomes.

The release of ChatGPT generated a mania around “existential risk” from AI (leading to open letters signed by hundreds of technologists) and simultaneously a mania around “democratized AI” (millions of users generating synthetic content). The mania’s unique feature: even experts disagreed on whether AI was overhyped or underhyped. Lesson: Ambiguity fuels prolonged mania. cybermania safe